Paul Vallas Finds A Hard Road In Bridgeport

Opinions On The Schools Chief Are Divided, And It's Too Soon To Tell If His Changes Are Working In The District

BRIDGEPORT — — To hear some tell it, Paul Vallas is the savior of Bridgeport schools, a visionary working to turn around one of the state's lowest-performing districts.

Others contend that the schools superintendent is an arrogant reformer, making too much change too quickly, with an agenda to turn education into a profit center.

Vallas, 59, a superstar in the world of education reform, arrived 15 months ago after turning around school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, and said he expected it to take him about a year to do the same in Bridgeport.

But this ailing Connecticut city — although a fraction of the size of the districts where he has worked — has proved to be a challenge in ways he hadn't expected.

While tapped by state Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor as a good candidate to help Bridgeport and welcomed with open arms by Bridgeport Mayor William Finch, Vallas has faced vociferous critics, several of whom are on the city's board of education.

Recently, however, he agreed to stay as long as three more years, but even that contract is the subject of contention. His supporters see it as perfectly legal, while detractors call it illegal because Vallas is not certified in Connecticut to be a superintendent — although he said he intends to get that certification.

His critics see Vallas and his close association with charter schools in previous cities and private consulting businesses as evidence of an interest in privatizing much of public education.

"I'll stay until I feel we have reached the point where we can safely say these reforms have been institutionalized," said Vallas, who annual salary is $234,000.

"We just don't want people to wait us out, which there is a tendency to do," he said.

It's too soon to say whether Vallas' reforms have raised standardized test scores — considered by many the ultimate measure of the success of education reform.

But it's clear that he has brought about a tidal wave of change, from closing a budget gap of about $18 million to overhauling the system's curriculum to developing plans to restructure high schools into smaller academies.

Dysfunctional District

Bridgeport schools are among the lowest-performing in the state. While statewide about half of high school students perform at "goal" or grade level on the state's standardized tests, in Bridgeport only 12.6 percent of students do so.

The city has also been plagued by financial problems. Students went without new textbooks for about a decade. In many cases, teachers had to photocopy existing books and the curriculum was inconsistent across schools and non-existent for some classes. The high school dropout rate is 54 percent.

"Some of these high school classrooms didn't look much different than the high school I was in 42 years ago," Vallas says. "It was obvious that the district had lost its way financially and academically."

The summer before Vallas' arrival, the city's board of education descended into dysfunction and voted to disband. The state stepped in and appointed a new board — an action that the state Supreme Court would eventually rule illegal.

But in the interim, Pryor suggested that the newly appointed board invite Vallas to come to Bridgeport to give them advice. While other similarly troubled cities like Hartford and New Haven had shown improvement in test scores, Bridgeport's numbers had not budged for years.

"We told him we don't want advice. We don't want pointers: We want you," said Jacqueline Kelleher who was a member of the board then and is now board chairwoman.

The board members looked to his track record in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, which wasn't without problems, but saw that that he had raised test scores and closed budget gaps.

Experts on educational reform say making this kind of change is Vallas' strength. "He's very good at coming into these really dysfunctional systems and giving them a swift kick in the ass," said Andy Rotherham, one of the founders of Bellwether Education Partners, a national non profit consulting group.

Rotherham said that Vallas comes into systems that "don't have the guts to do it or the know-how or the desire. … It's a 'go along, get along' system and he's not a 'go along, get along' guy. ... He's a disaster specialist."

Starting Out In Chicago

Trying to interview Vallas is a little like trying to get a sip from a fire hose. Ask about his greatest accomplishments in Bridgeport and he'll talk for a bit about closing the budget gap, but then veer off non-stop onto budget issues in Philadelphia or in Chicago.

The trait can be annoying to education board members, such as Maria Pereira, who says it's hard to get a straight answer to a simple question. But, Pereira, who is generally critical of Vallas, said, "I think he has done a good job on expressing what he wants to do."